Cadillac Jukebox (Dave Robicheaux 9)

His pretentiousness, his feigned old man's humility and irreverence toward the totems, were almost embarrassing. He had been an academic for years, but he denigrated universities and academics. He spoke of his own career in self-effacing terms but gave the impression he had known the most famous writers of his time. In his eccentric western clothes, a Stetson hat cocked on his white head, a burning cigarette cupped in his small hand, he became the egalitarian spokesman for the Wobblies, the railroad hobos of Woody Guthrie and Hart Crane, the miners killed at Ludlow, Colorado, the girls whose bodies were incinerated like bolts of cloth in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

His poems were full of southwestern mesas and peyote cactus, ponies that drank out of blood-red rivers, fields blown with bluebon-nets and poppies, hot winds that smelled of burning hemp.

His words seemed to challenge all convention and caution, even his own death, which one poem described in terms of a chemical rainbow rising from the ashes of his soul.

The audience loved it.

Clete craned forward in his seat.

"Check it out by the door, big mon," he said.

Karyn LaRose was dressed in a pale blue suit and white hose, with a white scarf about her neck, her legs crossed, listening attentively to Clay Mason. The horn-rimmed glasses she wore only added to her look of composure and feminine confidence. Two state troopers stood within five feet of her, their hands folded behind them, as though they were at parade rest.

"Why do I feel like a starving man looking at a plate of baked Alaska?" Clete said. "You think I could interest her in some private security?"

A middle-aged woman in front of us turned and said, "Would you kindly be quiet?"

"Sorry," Clete said, his face suddenly blank.

After Clay Mason finished reading his last poem, the audience rose to its feet and applauded and then applauded some more. Clete and I worked our way to the front of the hall, where a cash drink bar was open and a buffet was being set up.

"Watch out for the Smokies. It looks like they're working on their new chevrons," Clete said.

Clay Mason stood with a group by Karyn's chair, his weight resting on his cane. When he saw me, the parchment lines in his pixie face seem to deepen, then he smiled quickly and extended his hand out of the crowd. It felt like a twig in mine.

"I'm flattered by your presence, sir," he said.

"It's more business than pleasure. A Mexican kid who worked for Buford took a dive off a flophouse roof," I said.

"Yeah, definitely bad shit. They had to put the guy's brains back in his head with a trowel," Clete said.

I gave Clete a hard stare, but it didn't register.

"I'm sorry to hear about this," Clay Mason said.

On the edge of my vision I could see Karyn LaRose seated not more than two feet from us.

"What's happening, Karyn?" I said, without looking at her.

"You gentlemen wouldn't contrive to turn a skunk loose at a church social, would you?" Clay Mason said, a smile wrinkling at the corner of his mouth.

I took the pay stub from my shirt pocket and looked at it. "The guy's name was Fernando Spinoza. You know him?" I asked.

"No, can't say that I do," Clay Mason said.

"How about you, Karyn?" I asked.

The redness in her cheeks looked like arrowpoints. But her eyes were clear with purpose and she didn't hesitate in her response.

"This man is a detective with the Iberia Parish Sheriff's Department," she said to the two troopers. "He's annoyed me and my husband in every way he can. It's my belief he has no other reason for being here."

"Is that right, sir?" one of the troopers said, his eyes slightly askance, rising slightly on the balls of his feet, his hands still folded behind him.

"I'm here because of a kid who had to be blotted off a flagstone," I said.

"You have some kind of jurisdiction in New Orleans? How about y'all get something to eat over at the buffet table?" the trooper said. His face was lumpy, not unpleasant or hostile or dumb, just lumpy and obsequious.

"Here's today's flash, buddy," Clete said. "This old guy you're a doorman for, he popped his own wife. Shot an apple off her head at a party with a forty-four Magnum down in Taco Ticoville. Except he was stinking drunk and left her hair all over the wallpaper. Maybe we should be telling that to these dumb kids who listen to his bullshit."